Lunar Ronin

It's a good thing then that open beta for Page 3 was fifteen days. -

I sincerely want to thank the Homecoming developers for including the even con Mastermind henchmen with the +5 through +7 difficulty update. When Paragon Studios raised the maximum difficulty from +2 to +4 in September 2009, Mastermind henchmen went untouched. The Mastermind AT suddenly went from playing decently at maximum difficulty to substantially struggling. Then when the Incarnate Alpha +1 level shift was added in February 2011, Mastermind henchmen were ignored. It took an overwhelming outcry from Mastermind players to convince Paragon Studios to add the level shift to henchmen. Then when the Hybrid Incarnate ability was added, Mastermind henchmen were ignored yet again. IIRC, it took another overwhelming outcry from Mastermind players to get the Support hybrid to work on Mastermind henchmen and for the Assault hybrid to partially work on Mastermind henchmen. It was one of the last things that Paragon Studios did before being shuttered. When Homecoming developers first broached the subject of raising the maximum difficulty, I feared that the Mastermind AT would be ignored a fourth time. I was prepared to start a fight like we did on the old blue boards, or leave. Ask my friends, I had the war paint nearby. But none of it was necessary. Thank you for remembering the Mastermind AT and its players. Thank you for taking the time, the dedication, and the extremely hard work in raising the minion and lieutenant henchmen to even con. It is greatly appreciated.

Jack Emmert left DC Universe Online and Daybreak Games a couple of years ago. It got worse after he left. Andre Emerson and Al Rivera came on after Jack Emmert left. Also, don't trust AI search responses. They're frequently wrong.

Thankfully, I don't care about playing meta characters (in any game). I just really like how a couple of power sets there play, the travel powers are awesome, and being virtually "in" the DC Universe setting and flying around Metropolis and such after reading DC Comics comic books for 45 years is great. So I don't get to do elite raids. Big whoop. But it sets a terrible precedent, and it makes it much harder to onboard new players. I'd really hate to see anything like that come to City of Heroes, (which it won't, thankfully).

No thank you. The other MMORPG I play is DC Universe Online, and holy crap. The former Star Trek Online developers took over the game last year, and the DCUO monetization is now wild. Two or more FOMO timed events every single month that you have to either seriously grind or shell out $$ every month (each)... and they contain permanent very strong powers or NPC companions. If you happen to miss one of those timed events? Tough luck. You may never be able to get those permanent powers or NPC companions again. Then they started adding meta-changing and defining permanent powers to lockboxes. If you want to be in the meta, you have to pay $200 to $400 per character, per power. It's insane. Oh, and like the FOMO timed events, once those lockboxes are cycled out for new lockboxes? Good luck. I miss the days of when MMORPGs just had a subscription and that was it. "Free-to-play" is a joke.

It's far from the first time that I have heard that nonsense on Homecoming. It's mostly from true blue types who either never played red side or tried it once and never again. "If you want to team, you play a blue side AT. Red side ATs are for soloing." Yes, that surely explains the various strike forces and trials that you couldn't even start solo back on live.

It does. Tested it when friends pranked me by doing a blue side static team.

Just bumping this, because something tells me that there's going to be a whole lot of new Masterminds Group Flying around Paragon City and the Rogue Isles soon.

Yep, that's exactly what I do on every character. Both because I generally don't do blue side, and I don't go into a PvP zone for any reason.

Sure. I've successfully done all Mastermind +2 and +3 advanced difficulty mode TFs and SFs without issue. Mastermind is actually a good AT for them considering their single target damage. And that was before these changes. Why not +5? Honestly, people grossly over-inflate the issues with Masterminds. Do they have issues? Oh yes. But mostly their issues are due to jank and speed, not "lack of damage," and Page 3 deals with the survivability issue.

FWIW, that hasn't been the case for years. That other server gave each henchman his/its own costume slot. No more using the Mastermind's own costume slots.

Mastermind. Masterminds do a ton of single target damage, and between that and potentially debuffs from your secondary, you'll be an asset against AVs and GMs (even solo AVs depending on power sets and build), and be helpful to your team. Other than that, I second Gershwin's Fortunata recommendation. Great buffs, great defense, good damage. Just lacking on debuffs, but no character can truly do it all.

The best MMORPG of all time launched 20 years ago today. No, not City of Heroes. City of Villains! I remember stepping into Breakout on the Liberty server on my Robotics/Force Field Mastermind. Still my favorite archetype/class in any MMORPG today. Now go forth, and do villainy!

I've been leading a Praetorian completionist static team on the Indomitable shard. We all did the Precinct 5 tutorial, and all chose Resistance/Calvin Scott. We did every single story arc in Nova Praetoria, Imperial City, and Neutropolis. My character dinged level 20 running Message Man repeatable missions in Neutropolis before getting set to head to First Ward with the rest of the static team. After training from level 19 to level 20, I got a message that I was introduced to Steven Sheridan. Great, as expected. However, I looked at my contacts list, and I found that both Steven Sheridan and Provost Marchand were active contacts. As mentioned above, I had already done all of the Loyalist story arcs, so out of curiosity, I called Provost Marchand. He offered me the The Rift Enclosure mission, even though my character is Resistance. Strange. I didn't accept the mission, and called Steven Sheridan. He too offered me the The Rift Enclosure mission. I did a Message Man repeatable mission, and dinged level 21. Now, I have both Steven Sheridan and Provost Marchand as active contacts, and both are showing that I'm locked into a story arc. Provost Marchand is still offering me the The Rift Enclosure mission. This definitely seems like a bug. I imagine (although am not sure), that the locked story arc for Provost Marchand will go away once my character does cross over to Primal Earth, but that won't be until we finish both Wards. If the Beta Center were up, I'd be tempted to copy the character to Brainstorm and see if I can do The Loyalist version of The Rift Enclosure as a Resistance character. Alas.

I stumbled across a link on a very old City of Heroes website that is still online but hasn't been updated in over fifteen years to something called the City of Heroes Writer's Guild. The domain name is now property of spammers, so I wouldn't advise going there directly. My antivirus lit up like a Christmas tree when I did. However, out of curiosity, I found an archive on the Wayback Machine. There's dozens of City of Heroes screenshots and artwork, and several hundred fan fiction short stories. You can find the screenshots and artwork here and the fan fiction short stories here. I don't recall the website from my time on live, and having just stumbled upon it I thought that I'd share so these stories and art aren't lost to the sands of time.

Where do I begin... Some of this will be very spoilery. Noble Savage wasn't initially a Resistance member. He was a cop. A cop that elected to undergo an experiment to make a super-cop, but it went wrong. Neuron threw him away in the underground, like garbage. You later find him as Noble Savage, and only after you get involved do you set him up with the Resistance. Also, if you're an undercover Loyalist, you get the option to make Noble Savage an undercover Resistance member, secretly working for the Loyalists. Not all Ghouls were Resistance members. Some were, no doubt, but not all and I doubt not even most. Some were just abducted homeless. In the Hatchet story arc, you optionally discover that the Alpha ghoul you tame was originally also a cop, not Resistance. As referenced above, Neuron is a monster. He performs scientific experiments on people (many against their will), and then throws them away in the underground like the Ghouls and Noble Savage if they don't go as planned without any care in the world. Praetor Tilman/Mother Mammaries/Mother Mayhem is also a monster. You discover later that Seers are psychic women, abducted against their will as teenagers, and stripped of their personalities. Part of their souls are literally thrown away like garbage. Mother Mayhem also slowly kills them by slowly feeding off of their psychic energies, which is why you don't see any middle-aged or older Seers running around. On top of that, Mother is also highly mentally unstable. Praetor Duncan is a narcissistic, sociopathic whackjob who keeps a loyal army hooked on Fixadine. Some Resistance are also whackjobs that are more than willing to blow up innocents, yes. Those are the Crusaders, but there is also a faction called Wardens that want to overthrow Emperor Cole with as little innocent bloodshed as possible. I won't even get into the events of the Magisterium Trial and the Issue 24 Praetorian story arcs like Number Six's. Praetor White is ultimately selfish and out for power, but he's sane and can be worked with. Anti-Matter is also sane and can be worked with, he actually seems like the most decent of them all. Praetor Sinclair and Emperor Cole are both control freaks and are somewhere between the others.

Yes. Ghost Falcon posted on the old blue boards in September 2012 (after NCSoft shuttered Paragon Studios), that the idea was deemed unworkable for a multitude of reasons, but didn't go into what they were.

There were ads for the Nike Air Jordan Jeter sneakers, the Nokia N-Gage, and the Babylon A.D. film with Vin Diesel. Ultimately, the in-game advertisements were deemed a failure and NCSoft stopped it after a few months.

Raph Koster, lead developer of Ultima Online, Star Wars: Galaxies, and the upcoming Stars Reach MMORPGs, gave a hour long presentation recently on the evolution of online video gaming. It's quite interesting, IMO.

Welcome to Paragon City and the Rogue Isles! 1. Very, although some archetypes/classes are more suitable for soloing than others. The most solo-friendly archetypes/classes are Brute, Mastermind, Scrapper, Sentinel, Stalker, and Tanker. Others are still soloable, just less so. No raid is necessary. 2. No. You can't change archetype/class, character origin, and primary and secondary power sets, but every ten levels you get a free respec so you can change every thing else. If you need additional respecs, you can buy them with in-game money. 2.5. There are meta builds, yes, but they only matter in advanced mode task/strike forces, which are only regularly ran by particular groups and are a niche activity. Otherwise, you can pretty much play what you'd like. 3. Type /altinvite character. No, there are no advantages to supergroups other than bases. 4. Hero side is pretty easy as it came first. Villain side is a little bit more difficult, but not significantly so. Gold side is a bit more difficult and is only recommended for people with some experience under their belt. Over all, leveling content is actually more difficult than your average modern MMOG, but endgame content is significantly easier than the average modern MMOG. There are raids, but they're optional, and most of them are pretty easy any more. You only get penalized for not try-harding on advanced mode task forces/strike forces, and that's a social penalty, not game mechanics.

That, and I've been seeing others tell people over the past year or so that if they don't want to min-max and speed run, they should leave Excelsior for Everlasting "because RPers don't mind playing with others that aren't min-maxed."

Half true, half not. After the final Rikti pylon is destroyed, you have ten minutes on the clock before the mothership raid ends. Planting the first bomb will extend the timer three minutes for a total of thirteen. If you have fewer than 25 people on a mothership raid league, planting the second bomb spawns U'Kon Gr'ai and adds an additional ten minutes onto the clock for a total of 23 minutes. If there are 25 or more people on a mothership raid league, planting a second bomb adds an additional three minutes for a total of sixteen minutes. If you have 25 or more people on a mothership raid league, planting a third bomb spawns U'Kon Gr'ai and adds an additional ten minutes onto the clock for a total of 26 minutes. Defeating U'Kon Grai adds an additional five minutes onto the clock for a total of either 28 minutes if you have fewer than 25 people on the mothership raid league, or a total of 31 minutes if you have 25 or more people on the mothership raid league.

Gravity Controller or Dominator with a large supply of Ultimate inspirations solves that problem. Just keep Wormholing Rikti from the ramps into the middle of the bowl.

It seems that I doomed the Xbox by buying a Series X console. Sorry about that. From a well known and accurate Xbox leaker, and confirmed by a second well known and accurate Xbox leaker: TL;DR: Microsoft has scrapped plans for a tenth generation Xbox video game console, and is ramping down production of Series S and Series X game consoles. They plan to transition entirely into a cloud based environment, like the Google Stadia of old.